Architect's conceptual drawing of building in construction across Grey St. (Grey
St. Plaza)

Photos taken 2003
Click on illustrations to enlarge

Shopping Center prototype: Wright's Midway
Gardens

The Village Shopping Center in
East Aurora, N.Y. began as a neighborhood shopping center in the late 1960's and
followed a polo barn theme referencing the nearby Knox
estate. Over the years many additions and minor alterations made it difficult to
discern the original design.

Williamsville VS. East Aurora

In 1996, Patrick J. Mahoney
of Lauer-Manguso Architects was asked
to develop a theme to integrate a modern supermarket into a renovated shopping center.
Benderson Development Co. originally
asked Mahoney to duplicate a Williamsville project he had recently completed known
as the Walker Center. He felt a different approach would be more appropriate for
East Aurora. Mahoney's intent for this design was not only to integrate a new supermarket
into a sizable existing shopping center but, in fact, to utilize the opportunity
to reference the unique history of the Village of East Aurora.

East Aurora and the Roycroft Campus

The National Historic Landmark, Roycroft
Campus and its creator, Elbert
Hubbard, were the seeds of this design. The arts and crafts colony Hubbard created
was an evolving community prematurely deprived of its originator in1914, due to the
death of Elbert Hubbard in the sinking of the Lusitania. Hubbard had been
the partner of John D. Larkin in the Larkin Soap Companyand
was the driving force behind the early success of the Company which would grow to
become one of the largest mail order companies the world had known.

Hubbard and Wright

Elbert Hubbard's young protégé was
Darwin D. Martin, a soap salesman molded into
a financial genius by Hubbard. As Martin became comfortable in his major role in
the Larkin Company, Hubbard, in the prime of his career, retired and soon began the
Roycroft Colony in East Aurora. Darwin D. Martin assumed a leading role upon Hubbard's
departure from Larkin Co. in 1878, and was responsible for the choice of Chicago
architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, in the
design of the masterpiece that was the Larkin
Administration Building, adjacent to the Larkin Factories in Buffalo.

As the Roycroft Campus evolved, new buildings provided variations on the Arts
and Crafts theme first established in the 1890's. Darwin Martin, still a close
friend to Elbert Hubbard, continually attempted to bring the two geniuses together,
To many observers, the Mission style that Roycroft woodworkers produced and the Prairie style that Wright had developed
were variations on the same ideal. Martin hoped, in the ever-changing evolution of
the campus, that Wright would have the opportunity to leave his mark on a structure
within the complex.

Roycroft Campus & the Midway Gardens

Hubbard's premature death ended the hopes of a collaboration
between the Roycrofters and Frank Lloyd Wright, although Wright was known to have
stayed at the Inn around 1927. Faced with the need to renovate the existing shopping
center and develop an appropriate theme for the new construction, the
idea was adopted to reference the collaboration that never happened. The Roycroft
Campus itself became the reference from Hubbard's perspective -- and the Midway Gardens,
a 1914 Wright commission (demolished in 1929) became the reference source of Frank
Lloyd Wright's work.

Mahoney, and Lauer-Manguso designers Richard Olmstead, Kevin Payne, Arthur Smith,
Ron Calvo,and George Spears Jr. began to study not only the existing shopping center
but also what an appropriate blend of the two major influences could be. James
W. Manguso was the principal in charge of the project.

The non-consistent facades of the shopping center were to be unified with a simple
design punctuated by varied elements at major tenants or masking the irregular nature
of the existing center. Many additional Lauer-Manguso staff members help create the
construction drawings necessary.

The design reduced the overall height of the building but created a theme by introducing
variations. This was accomplished by using open elements that would not restrict
snow on the existing roofs. Even with this redesign it was required to completely
rebuild the canopy structure of the complex and to reinforce isolated areas of the
roof. By transferring the drifting snow areas to new canopy construction along with
the reinforcement, a safe structure was built.

Structural engineering was completed under the direction of engineers Lauri Traynor
and Joe Staats.